On the Beastie Boys' 1998 song "Unite" they declare, "We're the scientists of sound, we're mathematically putting it down" (it's one of the more pointy-headed boasts in rap history). These lines, though, could easily be assigned to fellow New Yorker and sonic adventurer James Murphy, producer behind the DFA label and mastermind of LCD Soundsystem.

News coverage of Malcolm McLaren's death a week and a half ago featured an archive clip of an interview with the man behind the Sex Pistols in which he defined the punk movement as "anti-design, anti-fashion, anti-social, anti-establishment". From a man who sometimes claimed to have planned the demise as well as the ascent of the notorious band, an antipathy for design seems perhaps the least credible part of that manifesto. Nor is it possible to overlook the fact that McLaren's former partner, Vivienne Westwood, went on to become a figurehead of design in what is probably its most conspicuous form – clothing.

Partner Young Kim tells <i>The IoS</i> that Sex Pistols manager wanted to make Sex, his Kings Road design store, look as if a bomb had hit it &ndash; and family believes that caused mesothelioma 30 years on

The Cadbury Cocoa House is coming soon to your high street. It will serve afternoon tea and chocolate and is an attempt by Cadbury – now part of Kraft – to take advantage of the booming, soaring, runaway success of coffee shop chains in this country.

"We hope that other philanthropists will also be interested in maintaining quality journalism to protect freedom of speech and encourage investigative reporting to promote greater transparency in society." Alexander Lebedev speaks out after acquiring The Independent and The Independent on Sunday.

A whiff of Partridgean "People like them, let's make some more" thinking surrounds the distinctly Kesha-like Kid Sister – aka 29-year-old Melisa Young from Chicago – but the Kanye West-affiliated crunk diva (West appears on the single "Pro Nails", and the whole thing's exec-produced by his DJ A-Trak) has enough in her locker to justify her existence.

Alongside his day job in Sonic Youth, Thurston Moore is something of an underground pop-culture oracle: he runs a record label, Ecstatic Peace. He collects long-forgotten literary journals. He writes a monthly music column for 'Arthur' magazine (arthurmag.com) and authors books on musical subcultures (grunge, no wave, mix tapes). Since February he has taken to the web to pursue his myriad interests with a blog, flowersand cream.blogspot.com. Here he writes about culture from the fringes: dispatches about underground poets and experimental musicians; snippets of his own poetry; details on upcoming projects including a record made with Kim Gordon and Yoko Ono; random pop-culture snapshots – a recent posting was a cut-out of a 1969 review of the Stooges by Jim Morrison's wife, Patricia Kennealy Morrison.